Tag Archives: Script Reading

Taking my own advice

Posted on December 24, 2010 | 1 comment

It’s an old cliche that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach. It was one of the reasons I was nervous about handing out advice about writing plays. I knew how I wrote plays, but did that entitle me to tell other people? Fortunately, reading plays for Lazy Bee Scripts was a logical step, since I was just helping out administratively. Then I began to notice that there were some common errors in the scripts being rejected, things that seemed basic and obvious to me. If I could mention these things to the authors, they could make their plays better….

I bring up this ancient history because in this last week, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to take some advice that I hand out regularly. One of the best ways to find out if a play works is to take the draft script along to your local drama club and get it read. Note: A complete draft, folks. Make sure the story has a beginning, middle and end. I know there are playwrights out there, probably some great ones, who closet themselves with a tame theatre group and workshop a storyline, in some cases for years. That’s all well and good, but to my mind the result is a group effort, and if that playwright has any conscience at all, theirs won’t be the only name in the author position on the play cover. No, if this is YOUR idea, YOUR story, then get it written down, THEN take it to the drama club. Their job will be to tell you if the story hangs together, if the characters are real or cardboard, if it’s even interesting at all.

That last point was my greatest fear. My full length play that I began way back in January, has stalled and been re-ignited several times. I threw away the first ten pages and started again with a different central character. The basic idea remained, however, and I made it over the word count that I use to judge length in Script Apppraisals.

SMP Dramatic Society are a local group who welcomed Steve, David and myself to watch their rehearsals of Fawlty Towers back in September. They’ve performed a couple of our pantomimes, and they were eager to meet us. When I asked if they could help with a read-through, they readily accepted and so last Sunday I was welcomed to a member’s house, offered a warming drink and settled in to hear the play read.

It’s an odd feeling, because it’s rare the words are voiced as you heard them in your head, but the reading was very well done, with feeling, enthusiasm and a good deal of laughter. They pronounced the script workable, but had a list of suggestions which were all positive and worthwhile. As I’ve mentioned before, rewriting is a chore I haven’t enjoyed, but this process has made that easier, and I intend to have the new draft completed by New Year’s Day – from concept to complete inside a year!

I’m writing this entry on Christmas Eve morning – our friends in Australia have already begun to Celebrate Christmas Day, our friends in the UK are gearing up for The Night Before Christmas and our weasels are thinking about going skiing before the afternoon Nativity Play in Church. Wherever you are, whenever you’re reading this, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

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Still juggling after all these years

Posted on June 9, 2010 | Leave a comment
Juggling responsibilities....

Keep it all in the air, and don't worry about what happens when you stop...

So I’m still fighting the battle of three fronts, but it feels like the domestic reno fight is being won. We have a beautiful guest bedroom now, with a luxurious carpet, bed, wardrobe and new armchair. Yesterday I took my life in my hands and wired in the new light fitting. I don’t do electrical or plumbing normally. Plumbing has the nasty habit of flooding the house in the time it takes to get the plumber to answer the emergency hotline, and electricity gets you dead before you have time to think “Did I switch off the BZZZZT!” However this was a special case – if we kept the old fitting, people would bang their heads on the shade as they crossed the room, and I wasn’t going to call the electrician out AGAIN…They’ve done brilliantly with the various assigned tasks, but we’ve paid generously for the privilege and the reno fund is dribbling away fast enough already. Anyway, despite spending twenty minutes stood on a chair with my arms above my head, I managed to complete the job and reset the breaker. Then I flipped the light switch and nothing happened. I had time to mutter the rudest word I know, then the light came on. Of course, energy saving bulbs! Ha ha!

The next challenge is going to be the roofing and guttering. A nice man from the local company came out to check over the roof and admitted that it could last another couple of years, but he wouldn’t swear to it. Sadly, the fascias and soffits (my favourite word of the week! Say it three times to yourself and try not to smile…) are almost all rotting and need replacing. Some of these we could *gulp* try to sort ourselves. So, today’s question to consider – should we purchase two very long ladders and twenty metres of soffits and fascias, write off a couple of free days and spend them cursing and swearing because the one sodding screwdriver I need is back on the ground AGAIN and I’m at the top of the ladder holding fifteen screws and a length of soffit….Or should we pay most of the remaining reno fund to the nice man and his company, get the roof and soffits done professionally and admit that the deck was just a lovely dream? Answers on the back of a twenty dollar bill please….

On the work front, I have three whole weekdays off. One I squandered yesterday in catching up on reviewing and buying the new armchair, but since the sun was shining I also walked Moose and got a haircut (I only get haircuts in the sunshine. It’s like not buying a car in the rain.) Today (Day Two) I’m returning stuff to Ikea, doing more reviewing and maybe some writing. I have a screenplay I have resurrected in order to enter it for the wonderful Red Planet Prize (http://www.redplanetpictures.co.uk/prize.php ), since it was co-founded by the brilliant Danny Stack ( http://dannystack.blogspot.com/ ) who I met during our time in Bournemouth. As a Canadian, I’m outside the entry requirements, but once I’ve got the first draft into shape, it’ll go through TLC Creative, who are officially based in the UK and we’ll enter it when we all like it. This is a pet project that I’ve already had rejected by the BBC – it was a proposal for an hour-long comedy drama, then it became a stage musical, now it’s back to the standalone tv piece again. It’s one of the few things I’ve written that has a complete outline for me to work from, but it keeps wriggling and changing while I’m typing, so it may emerge from the process as something different to the piece I originally imagined. As long as it makes me laugh, I’ll be happy. Although a big fat paycheck would be welcome too, obviously.

Speaking of which, the e-book is creeping closer to production. This week I received a full draft version – if we were printing it on paper, this would have been the Galley copy. There are very few typos, and only a few points that need changing. Since it’s coming out as a pdf file, we can include fun stuff like hyperlinks to the plays online so people can read about the play, then follow the link to read the play itself. And since it’s a pdf, you don’t need a dedicated e-book reader to read it. David and Steve have done a brilliant job, adding a series of great comedy pictures and captions to the text, breaking it up and rasing the laugh level considerably. Now we have to sort out the various ways we’re going to sell it : through Lazy bee Scripts (www.lazybeescripts.co.uk ) obviously, but we may host some of the sales direct from the TLC site too (www.tlc-creative.co.uk ).

In more local news, I heard that there was a sale of one of my short plays to a group in Burnaby, just down the road from where I live. I got in touch with them and hope to receive tickets for the show fairly soon. They’re called “Third degree Theatre” (http://bradtones.webs.com/shows.htm ) and their current show is a really good one. I’m jealous! With luck, I should be able to join the group and get them to work with me on some of my more recalcitrant plays, like the wretched Holocaust piece that won’t BEHAVE ITSELF AND STICK TO THE PAGE!

Mrs Dim was suggesting that I revisit the idea of being a playwriting guru, running classes at the local Adult Ed centre, something I’ve always shied away from. I’ve written a lot of plays, most of which have sold and been performed, but do I really have anything to teach? Well, the e-book was part of that experiment. I wrote a book about playwriting, so I must know something about it. Maybe the next stage is setting up a teaching programme.

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Why didn’t someone tell me?

Posted on June 2, 2010 | 3 comments
This is NOT me

A character called "The Author" in "Work in Progress"

Writing magazines are an important source of comfort and inspiration for the emerging author. Sometimes, however, I wonder about the focus they place on success.

When I became serious about being a writer, about a decade ago, I naturally turned to writing magazines to help me achieve my goals. I wanted good, solid advice on the path I was going to take. What I found, along with helpful articles on the nuts and bolts of story, was that there are only two types of writers that are featured in writing magazines.

Type 1: The Established Author. We hear a lot about Type 1 authors. We are invited to read about their typical writing day (“Get up, walk dog, drink coffee, retire to study, write 5,000 words, have lunch, walk on the beach, write another 5,000 words….”), or get a glimpse of their writing area. We’re asked to marvel at the details of their latest book deal, or commiserate with them that their brilliant novel has been savaged by Hollywood and turned into a dreadful (but lucrative) movie version.

Type 2: The Rising Star. These authors appear regularly too: the first deal neophytes, who break the big time with their first novel (“Cynthia Mulligan scored a $100,000 three-book deal after ***** bought her first novel ‘The housewife with a wooden leg’…”) Whether or not we’ll ever hear about Cynthia ever again is anyone’s guess. The important thing is that she penned an instant hit, and therefore YOU COULD TOO!

The problem I found with constantly being assailed with these two author types was not sour grapes (though you’d be forgiven for thinking so.) I know those at the top of the profession, those type 1’s,  had either a massive stroke of luck or clawed their way up by sheer effort. It takes tenacity and dedication to get a manuscript finished, let alone send it away again and again until it gets accepted. Even if you make it that far, odds are someone’s going to ask you to write another one… The same is true of the Type 2’s. No one is minding the kids and doing the housework for them while they retire to their writing area. They have to fit in the work around the work, as it were.

No, the problem is that this gives new writers the idea that these are the only two career paths for writers – successful superstars, or ‘Just made the big time’ authors. I wish – oh, how I wish! – that back then someone had told me you could be a jobbing writer.

Type 3: The jobbing writer. The jobbing writer still lives in the real world. They don’t attend big book signing events. They don’t sell film rights and buy a yacht. They probably don’t even call themselves “Writers” because they’ve found something specific, some niche that pays a steady wage and still allows them to stretch their creative muscles. They may be Columnists for newspapers or magazines, local paper reporters, speciality magazine editors or contributors, serial letter-writers, or, like me, playwrights. All of these people are Writers, all need the same skillsets as the Type 1’s and 2’s, they need to write in an engaging manner, keep tracking down and eliminating adjectives, spellchecking, fact checking, rewriting… But they don’t get interviewed for the Writing magazines, they don’t get the kudos for doing what they do. Yes, I’m sure you could find exceptions, famous columnists or playwrights, but I would argue that they have not become famous for that – Tom Stoppard may have been a famous playwright, but he became better known for writing the screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love”. “Bridget Jones’ Diary” was a popular column, but Helen Fielding didn’t hit the big time until it became a novel and then a movie.

In the last ten years I have beavered away, writing and working and waiting for the big break. It wasn’t until around five years ago that I realised I was actually earning a reasonable sum – say the equivalent of a part-time job. Not from one big score, but from the accumulation of lots of small pieces selling well. I had diversified, adding Script Reader to my Playwright title. Now I could review new scripts for my publisher. Then we launched a Script Appraisal service, where new writers could get to read the script reports I wrote, as well as having their script proof-read and marked up for errors.

Of course I’m still dreaming of the day when I find myself being interviewed as a Type 1. I’m still working on my screenplay and occasionally I dust off a manuscript and begin yet another re-write. But I know that by plugging away at my niche I’ve built a reliable income and been able to write the things I wanted to write – still do, in fact. If I’m only a little further on ten years from now, I’m sure Mrs Dim will be disappointed (She wants to go to the Hollywood parties…) but I think I will be content. As long as I don’t read too many Type 1 articles.

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